Numerous marine towing, utilitarian, emergency, and military applications are of a time sensitive nature and require a rapid response. Often such marine events, such as rescue attempts following a ship wreck, occur in dangerous conditions such as storms, complicating response efforts. Problems with response efforts are further compounded by existing towing and salvage methods which employ the use of humans to effect implementation of a response. Therefore, in severe maritime disasters, current methodology is often insufficient because the human responder cannot be jeopardized by being placed in potentially lethal conditions which could result in the loss of life. For example, a human responder may be put in danger due to rough seas, high winds, fire, toxic fumes, poor visibility, or hostile weapons fire in military type towing and salvage operations.
Current response equipment is often insufficient to meet the critical time requirements to effectively deal with such emergencies. Often distance from the response equipment, weather conditions, or other dangerous conditions hinder, and sometimes prevent, response efforts. For example, while conventional toxic spill response systems have been developed, the systems primarily involve the direct presence of humans to manipulate the necessary equipment. Also, such systems are generally restricted to liquid petroleum hydrocarbons (e.g., oil) only and do not address several other toxins (e.g., sulfuric acid) or the physical conditions (e.g., liquid, solid, gelatinous) in which they may occur.
Furthermore, conventional emergency response systems are not currently designed to be air deployed, are not autonomous, or remote-controlled, and are not fire and heat resistant. They are often incapable of working in rough sea states, are unable to robotically refuel, do not possess remediation spraying capabilities, are unable to ignite an oil spill and initiate a prolonged burn from within an oil spill without the use of a helicopter. Further, existing systems cannot tow oil boom autonomously, and do not possess an integrated operating software protocol which recognizes and works in conjunction with other autonomous vehicles and ships around it, and are unable to provide real-time mobile Geographical Information System (GIS) toxin mapping and response data.
Many maritime disaster situations involve ship based oil transport, oil rigs, oil terminal and oil storage facilities. Other maritime disaster events involve chemical spills, resulting in toxic chemicals being introduced into the maritime environment. Accidents involving toxic chemicals or hydrocarbon petrochemicals (e.g., oil) pose a serious threat to human, animal, and plant life, and cause substantial economic, social, and environmental damage. As a result of these chemical, hydrocarbon, or biological toxins emulsifying within an aqueous environment, their state is highly dynamic and volatile due to changing weather conditions, the rate of spillage, or risk of uncontrolled ignition, chemical reaction, and airborne contamination. Due to these and other factors, the available window of timing to initiate an effective response to a marine based spill is limited and critical where health threats, environmental and economic damage, and cleanup costs are concerned.
A crucial element in a toxic spill response is to rapidly contain the spilled substance (oil, acid, etc.) prior to its emulsification with, or subsequent spreading on, the surface of an aqueous environment. Hence a critical element of any liquid or solid toxic spill response system is an apparatus and effective methodology for rapidly containing the spilled substances. For example, to date, no one has been able to initiate a "tier one" response (the deployment of 100,000 feet of containment boom within 12 hours) to the 200 mile economic limit as defined by the U.S. Coast Guard.
A secondary element in a toxic spill response is to rapidly remediate or mitigate the spilled substance after containment has been initiated. Hence a critical element of any toxic spill response system is an apparatus and effective methodology for rapidly burning, coagulating, dispersing, and chemically or biologically remediating the spilled substances. No system currently exists which is able to address all of these remediation applications within one technology.
A third element in a toxic spill response is to effectively recover (skim) spilled raw or partially remediated substances from the marine environment in day or night conditions, in rough sea states, and to subsequently separate the recovered toxic substances from water or other fluids. Hence, a critical element of any liquid or solid, toxic spill response system is an apparatus and effective methodology for recovering the spilled substances from an aqueous environment in a liquid, solid, or gelatinous form and to separate said substances from water or other fluids.
In the fishing industry, fish are frequently spotted by aircraft which, in the process of transmitting the location of a school of fish also disclose this information to competitors. In many instances existing fishing practices are environmentally controversial (drift net fishing) and do not allow for selective removal of certain species without killing several others in the process of extracting those which are commercially desirable. In other situations fishermen must work away from their mother ships in very hazardous seas in small boats to close a purse seine or other fishing net. This approach can frequently result in death due to drowning and is the primary reason why Alaska's fishery is the most dangerous in North America losing some 35 people in more than a dozen accidents in one year (1993) alone. While many fishing systems have been developed, existing systems are often labor intensive, pose a serious risk to human life in rough seas, and are not air deployable.
Maritime fire fighting is particularly hazardous due to the volatile nature of most petroleum-based shipborne fires. These situations frequently generate temperatures far too hot for humans, and may involve explosive industrial materials, or munitions in the case of military vessels. Several lessons were learned during the Falkland Islands war where serious risk and loss of human life were experienced by the British Navy when various ships including the Galahad, Antelope, and Sheffield were hit. Under the combat circumstances experienced, it was very dangerous to engage in fire fighting or towing activities due to exploding ordinance. In dock-based fires, working underneath a burning structure to put the fire out from below is extremely dangerous due to collapsing debris. Yet this potentially lethal task is frequently undertaken by firefighters using scuba diving gear.
Commercial vessels can also become the targets of war as was the case with dozens of tankers which came under various forms of "microviolent" politically motivated attacks involving rockets, missiles, and mines during the nine year conflict between Iran and Iraq. Neutral casualties also included the U.S. military ship "USS Stark" which was mistaken for an Iranian vessel, and took a cruise missile hit (1987) which killed 27 crew and severely disabled the ship. In several instances during this war, towing companies could not respond to requests for assistance as they themselves would be attacked. Between 1975 and 1995 the office of U.S. Naval Intelligence reported 302 incidents of political/military maritime microviolence which resulted in 784 deaths. Hence, fire fighting, and towing of stricken vessels under these circumstances is extremely dangerous due to human imposed threats. Further dangers involve toxic fumes, poor visibility, and explosive fuels as was the case with the tanker "Sansinena" in Los Angeles Harbor when the ship's fuel vapors exploded, killing several people.
Closely related to fire fighting is the area of marine towing where existing relatively slow moving surface vessels have in many marine disasters not been able to reach a small vessel (e.g., fishing boats) without power before it and/or its crew perished. In less urgent scenarios the U.S. Coast Guard on an annual basis responds to several thousand requests for towing of vessels which are not in immediate peril but require a manned crew to tow them into port incurring high response costs for non-emergency towing situations.
Environmental threats to conventional towing operations are typified by the loss of the super tanker "Braer" in the Shetland Islands (1993) which illustrates the futility of manned response to towing situations in extreme sea states. After the crew abandoned the ship when it lost engine power, it drifted for six hours, during which time towing and salvage crews could not place a man aboard to fasten a tow line for fear of losing his life. The ship was smashed on the Shetland coast causing one of the worst oil spills in history. Even in less hostile conditions it can be several days before surface based vessels arrive to bring a fire under control, or tow a stricken vessel. This delay in timing can result in significant loss of life, ship, and cargo.
Existing towing capability is also confined exclusively to the realm of surface based operations, and does not utilize autonomous unmanned coupling devices, or the high speed response of air deployment. In general, it can be stated that existing towing and fire fighting methodologies are slow, labor intensive, ineffective, and dangerous under the aforementioned circumstances
All the foregoing applications are currently addressed with conventional, relatively slow, surface traverse and deployment methodologies which are human dependent and suffer from the limitations of placing people overboard in rough seas, high winds, low visibility (e.g., in the fog or at night), and in the presence of toxic fumes, caustic chemicals, fire, explosions, hostile weapons fire, sub-zero Arctic temperatures, as well as various marine traffic and navigational hazards. Existing systems are fragmented in terms of their multi-role systems integration, and lack modularity to simplify such aspects as air deployment while facilitating technological adaptability in diverse crisis response scenarios.
Accordingly, there is a continuing unaddressed need for a marine vehicle capable of marine towing, utilitarian, emergency, and military applications requiring time sensitive responses.
Additionally, there is a continuing unaddressed need for a marine vehicle capable of modular adaptability for various towing, utilitarian, emergency, and military applications.
Additionally, there is a continuing unaddressed need for an autonomous marine vehicle adaptable for a variety of emergency response scenarios, such as fire fighting, towing, spill remediation, and rescue operations.
Further, there is need for an autonomous marine vehicle capable of being air deployed to effect rapid response in distant or hostile locations.